Obama/Deeds rally in NoVA

I wasn’t able to attend the Obama/Deeds rally in NoVA Thursday evening but Kenton Ngo was there and has his thoughts up.

The best I can do is provide the remarks given by President Obama and our next governor, Creigh Deeds, both of which are below the fold.

Image courtesy of New Dominion Project

REMARKS OF CREIGH DEEDS AT A RALLY FOR VIRGINIA WITH PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA

~ As Prepared for Delivery ~

Thank you, Governor Kaine. I appreciate your friendship and your support.  All of us here respect your responsible leadership of our Commonwealth, and we thank you for your service to the Party.

Friends, I appreciate you joining with us here tonight as we continue the hard work of moving Virginia forward, standing on the shoulders of remarkable leaders such as Tim Kaine, Jim Webb and Mark Warner.  This effort, this campaign, will require each and every one of you, working together, to help us bring opportunity and hope and prosperity to every corner of Virginia.

By your presence here tonight, you recognize that Virginians deserve a Governor who will wake up every day with a clear understanding of the challenges we face, and a Governor who has a proven record of working to bring Virginians together to produce real results for people.

Virginians also deserve a Governor who has a detailed vision for maintaining our great public schools and our world-class colleges so we can better prepare our children for the jobs and opportunities of the future.

We need to build on what Mark Warner and Tim Kaine have already started here in Virginia – and what President Obama has the vision to advocate across the nation — by investing in quality pre-K education for every child.

There’s still a lot of room for reform.  I strongly support the President’s initiatives to expand charter schools.  There’s no reason Virginia should lag behind on this.  We should make changes that bring innovation and greater accountability to our schools.  Changes that ensure our education dollars are being spent wisely and where most needed: in the classroom.

We have a lot of work to do, but we can make sure every child in Virginia gets the strong public education they’re entitled to.

We also need to increase teacher pay to at least the national average. We can’t expect excellence if we aren’t even willing to pay for average. And we can’t expect to solve the challenges of tomorrow, in energy and technology, if we continue to fall behind the rest of the world in math and science.

We need a Governor who will encourage our teachers to go into math and science education. And who will pass a plan to forgive their student loans when those teachers agree to serve in the toughest schools in our most challenging school districts.

You know, my grandmother – my mother’s mom – proudly served more than 40 years as a Virginia public school teacher. She started her service way back in 1924, in rural Virginia. Like most women of that generation, she did not have the opportunity or the resources to earn a college degree, but she learned by reading and by doing.  She proudly taught generations of young people before retiring in 1964.

And I still vividly recall the day my own mother packed me off to college, folding together four 20-dollar bills, which I slipped into my pocket.

You see, I know something about the power — and the potential — that can be unleashed when a child has access to a quality public education.

That is what has motivated my own public service for the past 18 years.  That is why I stood with education leaders from across the Commonwealth earlier this year and demanded no permanent cuts to public schools. That is why I stood with Mark Warner during the historic 2004 budget reform battle – when we made the largest increase in education in Virginia history.

Before Mark Warner took office, our nation was facing record prosperity.  But here in Virginia, we faced a record budget shortfall.  Our state government was crippled by ideological leadership that refused to work across party lines.  Our triple-A bond rating, plenty of jobs, and the future of our state were at stake.

Over the last seven years we found a different way of doing things.  And that resulted in Virginia being repeatedly named the most business-friendly state over and over—seven times since Tim Kaine took office.  The best state to move your business to. And the best state in which to raise a child.

And one thing I know as I travel around the Commonwealth is this: Virginians don’t want to go back.  Virginia can’t afford to go back.  Virginians want and deserve to move our Commonwealth forward.

That is why I stand here tonight and ask for your continued support to build on that success as we prepare to sprint into the fall campaign.  Because we have come too far, we have accomplished too much together, to turn backwards to the failed vision and the misplaced priorities of the past.

I believe my opponent is a decent man, and I respect his career in public service.  But I also must tell you that at every significant moment, when there was a serious choice to be made, when there was an opportunity for him to be about moving Virginia forward — my opponent chose the ideological approach instead of working together.

At every key moment, when events or issues called for bipartisan agreement and consensus, for putting Virginia’s interests and Virginia’s future above mere partisan advantage – my opponent made the wrong choice.

On the issue we’re talking about today – education – my opponent talks about his support for schools, but he has a long record of opposing funding for public education, school construction and pre-K. Just a few weeks ago, my opponent put forward a transportation plan funded by taking at least $5.4 billion dollars away from public education over the next ten years, by his own estimates.

We can’t afford that.  We can’t afford to take Virginia back.

In a Deeds Administration short-changing education is not an option.  I will oppose any effort to cut education and will support innovative and creative improvements to our schools.

I’ve probably taken too much of your time already, and I certainly do appreciate your presence and your attention here tonight. I again ask for your continued support and your energy and your enthusiasm as we head into the fall.

But I’m smart enough to recognize that you are also here tonight to show some love and demonstrate your strong support for our guest of honor:

You know, if someone had said to you last January – or in March – or heck, last month, or even last week– that within six months of taking office, we would see the stock market regain a quarter of its lost value, or banks line-up to repay their TARP bailout funds, or that the housing market, and other leading economic indicators, would show signs that our economy was starting to recover.

The smart people would have said that you were naïve – that there was no way a new President could navigate our rocky economic shoals quickly or successfully.  And while our nation’s economic challenges remain serious, and we’re not completely on the road to full economic recovery for every family, we have come some distance to restore confidence and pride in America.  And we’re not done yet.

So now I encourage you to give a warm Northern Virginia welcome to our guest of honor—to a leader that Virginia, after 44 years in the political wilderness, firmly pushed into the winner’s column last fall…

Ladies and gentlemen, fellow Virginians, with pride and honor, I present to you The President of the United States.

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REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT

AT FUNDRAISER FOR STATE SENATOR CREIGH DEEDS

August 6, 2009

Hilton McLean Tysons Corner

Tysons Corner, Virginia

6:25 P.M. EDT

THE PRESIDENT:  Hello, Virginia!  (Applause.)  It is good to be in Virginia.  (Applause.)  It’s not that far away, but — (laughter) — it’s still just good to be here.  I still get a good vibe from Virginia.  And I just want to begin by telling you one of the reasons I love Virginia is because early in my campaign, January — 2007 — (laughter) — I’m trying to remember it, it’s all a blur — right after I announced I called up the new governor of Virginia, and obviously he was new, not very experienced — (laughter) — because he decided he was going to endorse my candidacy at a time when nobody could pronounce my name.  (Laughter and applause.)  And he has been at my side ever since, and he’s been on the side of the people of Virginia every since.  Give it up for Tim Kaine.  (Applause.)

Now, there’s a pattern that’s emerged in Virginia.  You had a guy named Mark Warner — (applause) — who recognized that the old tired politics of division and slash-and-burn weren’t serving the American people and the people of Virginia anymore.  So he came in with a different message.  He said, I’m going to figure out what works.  I’m going to figure out how we can get parties to work together, to invest in education and make sure that every child in Virginia can get a great education.  I’m going to figure out how we can start making the long-term investments that will make Virginia competitive in the global economy.  And working together with a whole bunch of folks, he was able to put Virginia on the path of extraordinary growth

Then Tim Kaine comes in and builds on that legacy — (applause) — and even in tough times has continued to keep Virginia on an upward trajectory where it has been able to survive tough times — better than most — because of the long-term investments, the vision that Tim Kaine has maintained as governor of Virginia.  He hasn’t been distracted by the petty politics and the trivial politics and the game-playing.  He constantly asks himself each and every day, what do I need to do to make life a little bit better for the people of Virginia.

So now this great Commonwealth of Virginia has the opportunity to continue that tradition with somebody who has that same spirit of pragmatism, of cooperation, of listening to people even when other people don’t agree with him, of civility, an ability to focus not on the short-term politics of an issue but the long-term that will make a difference.  And that is Creigh Deeds.  And I know that the people of Virginia are going to continue that tradition.  (Applause.)

Now, I’ll admit I’m a little biased because I was a state senator for eight years, and lo and behold, Creigh Deeds has been a senator for eight years.  (Applause.)  He has some wonderful daughters; I’ve got wonderful daughters.  (Applause.)  He’s got kind of a funny name — (laughter) — I’ve got kind of a funny name.  (Laughter.)  So there’s some things that just create a bond between the two of us.  (Laughter.)

But the reason I’m standing here is because when I look at his record as a prosecutor, when I look at the way that he was able to marshal support for things like Megan’s Law and Amber Alerts that have practical consequences in making sure that our children are safe; when I think about the way he was able to partner with Mark Warner and Tim Kaine in order to create strong investments in education even when they were confronting a fiscal crisis — doing it in a responsible way that didn’t undermine the long-term growth of Virginia; when I look at the way he conducts himself in his campaign, speaking truth to power, but always doing it in a way that reminds us that we have to bring people together instead of driving them apart — I know he is the right person for Virginia.  And you know it, too.  That’s why you’re supporting him.  (Applause.)

But, look, let’s be honest.  This is going to be a tough race.  This is not going to be — Tim and I, as we were walking in, we said, we don’t like doing easy — we never — we don’t do things easy.  (Laughter.)  We like kind of squeaking it out to create more excitement, enthusiasm, and give reporters something better to write about.  We don’t believe in blowout victories.  (Laughter.)

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  — your second term!  (Laughter and applause.)

THE PRESIDENT:  But this is going to be a tough race.  It’s going to be a tough race because Virginia, although it has been moving in the right direction, is still a purple state.  It still has traditions that make a lot of people independent, a lot of people suspicious of ideologies on other — either side.  That’s part of what’s going to make this tough.  And it’s also going to be tough because the economic environment is tough.  I don’t think any of us can deny it, Virginia has weathered this economic storm better than most states.  But unemployment is still high.  People are still losing their homes.  Folks are still looking at their 401(k) and wondering whether it’s going to bounce back.

And so in that kind of environment, wherever the incumbent party is, it’s always going to have some challenges.  Even if people, when they really stop to think about it, recognize that this is mostly a mess that was inherited, people are still going to, rightly, hold the party in power responsible.  What’s your plan?  What’s your agenda?  How are you going to move the state forward?  And that’s right and proper, because we can’t spend all our time looking backwards or making excuses.  Our job is to look forward and to determine how are we going to, regardless of what cards we’re dealt, how are we going to make sure that families here in Virginia and all across America are able to succeed.

Now, I think that we have the best case to make that having brought this economy back from the brink, having inherited an unprecedented crisis, still we are now on the path where markets have stabilized, the banks are no longer in meltdown mode; we’re starting to see housing for the first time increase in prices in three years; that we’re starting to see a kind of resurgence of optimism that in this environment, if we are willing to make the investments in the new foundation for long-term growth, then we’re going to succeed.

And the kinds of things that we need for that new foundation are exactly the kinds of things that Creigh is talking about — (applause) — making sure that we continue to invest in early childhood education and everything that’s necessary for our children to succeed in math and science; making sure that they can finance their college educations, because we know that whoever trains their children best today, that’s going to be the country that’s able to compete tomorrow.

Making sure that we are tapping into a new clean-energy economy — (applause) — that is focused on harnessing the innovation and the dynamism of the American people; and making sure that we’re creating a business environment in which small businesses and large businesses are rewarded for success; making sure that we’ve got a transportation infrastructure that works for people to get to and from work, but also allows businesses to succeed.  (Applause.)

Those are the kinds of measures and steps that Creigh has stood for since he first entered into politics.  That’s what’s going to help guide this economy into the future, into the 21st century.

So the key right now for all of us is making sure that we fight through the doubts, we fight through the cynicism; we hit the ground — I want to make sure that everybody who was as activated around my campaign just a few months ago is not sitting back and suddenly saying their work is done.  (Applause.)  I need everybody who was in Virginia and helped give us a big win during the primary and helped give us a historic win in the general election — that everybody is working just as hard, knocking on doors, making phone calls, talking to their friends, talking to their neighbors.  (Applause.)

We have just started to change this country, and we need a partner like Creigh Deeds to finish the work that we just began. (Applause.)

Thank you very much, Virginia.  Love you.  (Applause.)